Last Sunday, Laura Mouille was walking her dogs Dexter and Deagan at Buena Vista Dog Park when they came across a man with three pit bulls. That’s when Mouille says Deagan, her eight-year-old Maltese Pomeranian mix, got trapped in the middle of the large dogs.

“The one attacked him, grabbed him by the neck, swung him around like a rag doll and wouldn’t let go.”

Mouille said her first reaction was to scream. Not knowing what else to do, she tried to free Deagan from the pit bull’s grasp.

“I ran up; I grabbed Deagan. I was on the ground and the pit bull still had him latched onto his neck and I was trying to get him away,” Mouille explained. “The owner came up and started hitting his dog to get him to release.”

Once Deagan was free, Mouille grabbed him and wrapped him in a blanket, but she says her pup wasn’t moving.

“He was just lying in my arms limp. His tongue was hanging from the side of his mouth, blood all over his neck,” she said.

“He couldn’t move. He hadn’t moved his limbs at all; he just laid in my arms limp.”

Mouille rushed Deagan to the Guardian Veterinary Centre where the doctor took him in for X-Rays.

“X-Rays showed that his neck had been fractured in two spots; damage to his trachea; his jaw was broken,” said Mouille.

The young woman was given the option to have an MRI done on Deagan to make sure his spinal column was severed, but she said Deagan hadn’t moved in over an hour so she made the tough decision to put him down.